a priori and onwards
by mirai3k
Summary: Guessing keeps them going, leads to knowing, leads to lasting. True, it may not be the best foundation, but castles too were raw clay once. Taito


Disclaimer: Not mine, and there's probably a good reason for that.

Note: this is a super-late gift-fic for electrumqueen over at lj. So yes, Happy Christmas & New Year's like 3 months later, and _thank you_ for being continually awesome!

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_**a priori and onwards**_

They are not opposites, not quite, not really (just the opposite, they will later discover), and it's not as if they're on different planes or wavelengths or whatever physics metaphor two people apply to themselves when their thoughts follow dissimilar paths and end up in different destinations.

Looking back, it is probably that last bit that changes everything.

No matter where Yamato begins, regardless of whether he takes a bus or train or a bike or a hike, he ends up meeting _him_ halfway. Somehow, this is proving to be an inevitable truth, and one with a deeper meaning that he has, so far, managed to keep secret from himself.

_x_

Taichi is no stranger to secrets.

He can be meddlesome and obnoxious where others are concerned but at the end of the day, he knows when to pry and when to leave it alone. Contrary to popular opinion, he pays attention to more than sports news and new music and videogame releases. To be fair, he'd tell you that popular opinion doesn't know as much as it thinks it does about anything let alone his attentiveness to the signs that precede surrender and those that mark brick walls.

_x_

Brick walls imply corners and dead ends and no escapes. Yamato's father told him that much in not-so-many words.

Most of them are invisible, he's learned, and his mother taught him _that_ without needing to say a word.

_x_

Words are needless where dim lights and pale sheets and silent dreams are concerned.  
Sometimes, Yamato brings his guitar and plays it, all soft chords and slow fingers, until the other boy falls asleep.

These lapses in judgment aren't always entirely unpleasant. The sight of cheek against pillow, stands of hair falling and blending into lashes is, more often than not, enough.

Lately, he's been finding it increasingly difficult to keep secrets from himself. The thought of change in itself is terrifying.

He comes back to his own apartment then, and stays up playing makeshift lullabies to dull the edges of these days.

_x_

These days are no longer anywhere near the way they used to be, what with familiarity and solidarity wavering like the weather. Everyone else seems to have found themselves. Everyone their age or older and even their little siblings have latched on to some sort of durable place or plan or person.

Yamato has, despite the irony of it, become his supposedly durable person.

It's a funny word—"durable"—and sounds like plastic food-containers, like cling-wrap, like wiring. Still, ironic is ironic and mostly it just lies in the fact that Taichi can still recall with vivid clarity that look of ice-cold mistrust in ice-blue eyes when they'd crossed paths for the very first time. And it is supposed because even on their best days, sometimes he still feels like he's playing it by ear, running on barely perceptive signs, and a hella lot of guesswork.

_x_

Guessing keeps them going, leads to knowing, leads to lasting. True, it may not be the best foundation, but castles too were raw clay once.

Even after all this time, Taichi does well not to make the mistake of thinking that he knows Yamato inside out. No, not even close sometimes. For all the time they have spent together, for all the grit and wear and tear, he does not let himself forget Yamato's too-solid-too-real brick walls, not to mention, his brick floors and ceilings too.

So far, Taichi has only begun worming his way in, making way just enough to have a peek inside. A few slits and cracks in the mortar have emerged as consequences of the rare no-holds-barred exchanges, words and fists and thoughts and breaths, and the moments of vulnerability that follow. At times, it feels as if it may be another lifetime until these walls cave and allow him to reach inside and touch and hold, but as impatient as he may be with the rest of the world, he tries to tell himself that for _this_, it's got to be different. _Don't make it into another war game. Not with him. Not again. Just. Wait..._

_x_

Waiting is a familiar game, a safe game. It doesn't require much, just patience and more patience, levelled breaths and collected words, control over the peripheral nervous system and a still, still heart.

It is a game Yamato learned early in life and has been perfecting ever since. He was doing just fine too, no—doing remarkably—until one day, _this_ boy came along and broke just about every single rule.

The one rule that's still in effect is that Taichi must always close his eyes—no, _fall asleep_—before Yamato can kiss him goodnight.

He tells himself it's a good rule, an important rule, not at all silly and arbitrary and wearing him down. More importantly, he tells himself that it's all he's got of his former self and as awkward and alone former-self may have been (still is, sometimes, when it takes possession of present-self), he is not someone who can let it go entirely and it has nothing to do with what he does or does not want.

Yamato does not want to be that boy anymore, misery and mystery painted on his face. When he thinks about it long and hard, he knows that he doesn't have the deep, dark secrets to back that up. All he has is a box of clay with imprints that run bone-deep.

And while he's on the topic of secrets, he's trying to admit to himself all of the things he never dared to voice before.

Like how, sometimes, he wants (so badly) to be the one to close his eyes first.


End file.
